Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Citizen Dinner Jacket
Posted by: Dean Barnett at 3:34 PM
The decision to invite The Mahdi to Columbia was a dreadful one. It made no sense for a somewhat prestigious university to give him a platform from which to spew his hatred and barely comprehensible Islamic gibberish. The worst part of the day was the applause that greeted many of his comments. Obviously, not everyone on the left will prove as savvy when it comes to recognizing America’s enemies as Dean Lee Bollinger.
Aaah, Dean Bollinger. There’s an academic who’s a riddle wrapped in mystery and shrouded in enigma. Did he invite Ahmadinejad to campus just to insult the Dinner Jacket right to his face? Or did the outrage over his ridiculous decision to invite the Mahdi shame him into it?
Or perhaps there’s some other explanation. Marc Ginsburg on FoxNews yesterday was speculating that some Iranian benefactor would soon be sending an enormous check Columbia’s way for rolling out the welcome mat for the Mahdi. Ginsburg offered this speculation before Bollinger’s speech. Perhaps the Dean’s speech was a desperate attempt to get clean. Or maybe it was even part of the deal. Until Bollinger fills us in on exactly what he was thinking from the controversy’s git-go, we won’t know precisely what thoughts were zipping around this egghead’s brain. And even then, most people will take his explanation with a justifiable grain of salt.
Nevertheless, it seems petty to criticize Bollinger’s speech yesterday. Bollinger said everything that any reader of the blog would have said; probably more. Genocidal lunatics don’t deserve politeness, and Lee Bollinger didn’t extend any to his guest of honor. You can say that Bollinger’s decision to invite Ahmadenijad was an unpardonable sin. I’d be okay with that line of argument. But give the man credit for looking evil in the eye and calling it out.
SO WHO WON THE DAY’S PROPAGANDA BATTLES? That was one of Hugh’s big points on the show last night – Ahmadenijad won the propaganda battle because he filibusters and the Iranian media only reports what it wants anyway. As far as the Iranian side of the equation is concerned, Hugh is of course right. Whatever happened in New York, the Iranian media would have reported it as an unmitigated triumph for the diminutive Dinner Jacket. If the Mahdi had spent all his time in Manhattan sequestered in his room gorging on Spectra Vision, the Iranian media would have glowingly reported on his relentless efforts to comprehend the debased state of American culture.
In judging the net effect of yesterday’s events, Bollinger’s harshest critics ought to be intellectually honest about the following – regardless of what transpired at Columbia, the events there were destined to have little to no impact on what kind of story made its way back to Tehran. That’s what happens when the government owns “the truth”. Actual events cease to matter.
The real battle for hearts and minds yesterday didn’t concern Iran. It concerned America. Right now we have no terrain from which to fight a propaganda battle in Iran. But the Iranian street isn’t our real concern, or at least it shouldn’t be. Our real concern should be the American street.
Over the weekend, I subjected myself to an unusually large does of Bill Maher’s schmuck-fest on HBO. This week’s panelists were writer Salman Rushdie, singer-songwriter Rob Thomas and “comedienne” Jeanine Garofolo. The conversation was even more idiotic than normal. Typically, Maher will have a hackneyed left-wing intellectual on the panel (a role well-played by Rushdie), an otherwise intelligent right-winger willing to debase himself by going on Maher’s show and one utterly ignorant leftist entertainer who thinks he’s well informed because he reads the Democratic Underground and had lunch once with Noam Chomsky. This week, the balance was skewed as there were two leftist entertainer ignorami.
At one point, the entertaining ignorami began talking to each other in some language that sounded like a secret language twins share. They started spluttering something about the Carlyle Group. Bill Maher jumped in, saying “I’m lost.”
For those not in the know, the Carlyle Group is a lynchpin of Bush hating and Truther nonsense. The Truthers think that the Carlyle Group is the beneficiary of the Iraq war, on whose behalf the Bush government waged the war in the first place. (Silly you! I bet you thought it was Halliburton. Get with the times.) But there’s more! The Carlyle Group is a $76 billion private equity firm that has among its shareholders members of the Bush family, the House of Saudi and the bin Laden family. Forget the inconvenient facts that it has over 1000 investors from over 560 countries and that its portfolio companies employ over 250,000 people. The Carlyle Group’s very existence is a veritable smoking gun for the Truthers that proves(!) that 9/11 was an inside job. After declaiming for a bit on the Carlyle Group (with even Bill Maher pretty much rolling his eyes), Garofolo further explained that she doesn’t use email anymore because she knows the government is watching her.
I relay this anecdote to you merely to prove that a portion of our left wing has gone around the bend and ain’t coming back. They’ve become like Mel Gibson’s cab driving character in “Conspiracy Theory”. These are the people who write Daily Kos diaries saying how much they love the Mahdi. There are lots of them, but they are a minority of modern liberals and non-existent in the American center.
To me, that’s why yesterday didn’t turn out to be such a bad day. Lee Bollinger, a man of the hard left, sided with America and against our enemy. When it came Ahmadinejad’s turn to speak, he beclowned himself by saying there are no homosexuals in Iran. Perhaps even some Daily Kos diarists would be reluctant to see such a man control nuclear weapons.
For this country to effectively deal with the challenges hurtling at us, the left is going to have to get its act together. Yesterday, one man of the left did precisely that. Hopefully others will follow.
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